“A Good Communist Style”

2020 ◽  
Vol 151 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-50
Author(s):  
M. Paulina Hartono

This essay focuses on the history and politicization of radio announcers’ vocal delivery in China during the mid-twentieth century. It explores how Chinese Communist Party leaders used internal party debates, national policies, and broadcasting training to construct an ideal Communist voice whose qualities would ostensibly communicate party loyalty and serve as a sonic representation of political authority.

1984 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 24-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Young

The legacies of the Cultural Revolution have been nowhere more enduring than in the Chinese Communist Party organization. Since late 1967, when the process of rebuilding the shattered Party began, strengthening Party leadership has been a principal theme of Chinese politics; that theme has become even more pronounced in recent years. It is now claimed that earlier efforts achieved nothing, and that during the whole “decade of turmoil” until 1976, disarray in the Party persisted and political authority declined still further. Recent programmes of Party reform, therefore, still seek to overcome the malign effects of the Cultural Revolution in order to achieve the complementary objectives of reviving abandoned Party “traditions” and refashioning the Party according to the new political direction demanded by its present leaders.


2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathon Glassman

AbstractThe founders of the Zanzibar National Party can be understood as creole nationalists, who imagined their political authority as stemming from membership in a transnational Arab elite. But in the mid-twentieth century, prompted by the rising hegemony of territorial nationalism and by subaltern challenges informed by pan-Africanism, they crafted a new historical narrative that depicted their movement as having originated with indigenous villagers. Party leaders then related this narrative to Western scholars, whose publications helped reproduce the myth throughout the rest of the century. This article traces the genesis of this masquerade and asks what it implies about the nature of the creole metaphor and its supposed link to discourses of cosmopolitan hybridity. The conventional contrast betweencréolitéand nativist essentialism is shown to be illusory.


China Report ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fung Chan ◽  
Biyang Sun

Following the initiation of the policy of ‘Reform and Open Door’, the possibilities for public officials to trade power for private gain in China increased. To tackle the problem of corruption, different levels of Discipline Inspection Commissions (DICs) in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) initiated investigation related to various corruption cases. However, due to the nature of the administrative set-up in China, the local DICs could not effectively carry out their functions. As a result, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) was compelled to take on a bigger role, including controlling personnel appointments in local DICs and dispatching inspection teams to local jurisdictions. This strategy also enabled the central government and the top leadership of the CCP to build up a positive image with respect to fighting corruption. Nevertheless, the discretionary power of the top party leaders that has been enhanced through these centralisation measures leads to doubts over the real motives behind the CCP’s anti-corruption efforts. In March 2018, the National Supervision Commission (NSC) was established as the highest governmental anti-corruption agency, but more time is needed to judge the effectiveness of this new institution.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucien Bianco

The Soviet (1931-33) and Chinese (1958-62) famines were man-made catastrophes that occurred in underdeveloped states with growing populations during peacetime and affected traditional surplus areas. Both are marked by overly ambitious industrialization strategies at the expense of the rural economy in which central authorities failed to lower grain quotas once famine broke out and even increased them. The famines also had differences, notably regarding the nationality or ethnic question, which played a key role in Ukraine and was present in the Kazakh famine, but was absent in the Chinese famine. Also, Chinese Communist Party leaders, notwithstanding the cruelty of their policies, were much better disposed towards peasants than were the Soviet Bolsheviks. One cannot ascribe murderous intent on Mao’s part, but rather an incoherency of policy and unwillingness to recognize and correct his errors.


1968 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 563-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerome Ch'en

“ The warlords of twentieth–century china have received little scholarly attention.”. This omission is due, apart from the reasons viven in Mr. Sheridan's ‘Preface’, to the historical significance of the men and their period not being fully appreciated. What sort of men were they ? How did they rise to such great power? What effect did their abuse of power have on Chinese society ? Why did the May Fourth Movement, the Washington Conference, the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the reorganization of the Kuomintang, and the May 30th Movement use the misrule of the warlords as their back–drop? How far did the warlords undo the work of the restoration in the 1860“s and 19870”s ? These are but a few pertinent questions. In a period of merely 16 years (1912–28), over 1, 300 warlords had fought more than 140 provincial and interprovincial wars. Such a period is bund to be complicated but should not daunt the curiosity of the historian.


1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jieli Li

Geopolitical theory is employed to address the question of why the Chinese Communist Party-state persists, despite Western pressures stemming from the suppression of student demonstrators in “Tienanmen Square” in 1989. As the theory postulates, macro dynamic forces revolving around the geopolitical processes are crucial to the resource mobilization and legitimacy of the state. The entire history of the Chinese Communist Party is reviewed in order to document the conclusion that changes in the geopolitical position of the Party are associated with periods of internal strength and weakness. Since 1979, the Chinese Communist Party-state has been increasingly favored by geopolitical circumstances, thereby facilitating its internal strength even in the face of Western pressures, potential for internal dissent, and collapse of the Soviet empire. As long as this favorable geopolitical trend continues, the Chinese Communist Party will likely exist as a ruling political force in China.


1992 ◽  
Vol 129 ◽  
pp. 26-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Stranahan

During the National Salvation Movement of the mid-1930s, the Shanghai Party forged its most workable alliance not with members of the proletariat but with progressives from the city's middle and upper classes. Making use of multi-class patriotism, Party leaders established a co-operative relationship with members of the elite that became a crucial part of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) resistance work against Japan. In many cases, the relationship continued into the post-war years and contributed significantly to the CCP's easy takeover of the city in May 1949.


Author(s):  
Jeremy Wallace

Since 2012, politics in the People’s Republic of China has been remade. Both institutional and rhetorical changes characterize this neopolitical “new normal,” which coincides with Xi Jinping’s rise to the top of the party-state hierarchy. But these changes extend well beyond Xi himself. Political authority has been centralized and folded back into the Chinese Communist Party, while complaints, self-criticisms, and confessions have begun to air publicly. Repression and humiliation have been used against critics as wide-ranging as Hong Kong booksellers, feminist activists, and rights lawyers, among others. Most ominously, the government has embarked on a massive detention and reeducation scheme in Xinjiang, with the number of those interned estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands or even surpassing a million. This chapter investigates China’s neopolitical turn—its limits, sources, and implications.


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